Hampton Roads residents’ ability to surf the web could be threatened as sea levels rise over the next several decades.

Climate change leads to rising seas, which leads to flooding, which could inundate infrastructure that provides internet to coastal areas including southeastern Virginia, according to new research from the universities of Oregon and Wisconsin.

Researchers found that more than 4,000 miles of fiber optic cables and more than 1,100 “node” stations across America’s coastal cities could be under or surrounded by water within the next 15 years. New York, Miami and Seattle are considered to be at the most risk.

Most internet-carrying cables – including copper, fiber and hybrid models – “are not designed to be under water. But many of them will be,” said Carol Barford, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and the report’s co-author.

The cables often follow rights of way along roads and bridges, she said. That excludes deep-sea cables designed, for example, to run under the Atlantic.

In Hampton Roads, sea levels are conservatively estimated to rise more than a foot by 2050. Recurrent nuisance tidal floods are accelerating and flood rates “rapidly increasing” in Norfolk, according to NOAA.

Co-author and computer science professor Paul Barford said fiber cables are often seen as immune from the issue, laid in trenches as much as 3 feet underground “under the assumption they are weather-resistant.”

“They’re not waterproof,” he said.

Water seeping in, particularly saltwater, could ruin the equipment by shifting and degrading the delicate fibers that are encased in plastic tubing.

Gary Tarpley, owner of Metro Fiber Networks based in Yorktown, has worked with such equipment for decades. He said most of Hampton Roads, especially private internet service, is still run on “legacy systems,” such as copper and hybrid fiber-copper wiring. Those would not hold up against consistent floods, he said. The “sizzling” sound landline users may sometimes hear on the phone – that’s often a wet copper line.

Fiber holds up much better, he said. It’s the transition from legacy cables that he sees as a concern.

“We’ve got a long way to go to get there,” Tarpley said. “A lot of infrastructure needs to be built.”

Power infrastructure often follows the same rights of way as internet equipment, Carol Barford said. And most internet service wouldn’t be accessible without power, which comes from electrical stations highly vulnerable to water damage.

The scientists also noted the risk to data centers that store equipment and redistribute internet signals fed by the cables. A majority of these centers “are near a tidally active region,” researchers wrote.

Much of the studied internet infrastructure was installed two to three decades ago, making the aging equipment further vulnerable.

“All these things we need every day and don’t think about will be affected by massive flooding,” Tarpley said.

Meanwhile, the five southside cities are working toward a “regional connectivity ring” that would connect and expand their broadband networks.

Peter Wallace, chief information officer in Virginia Beach, said the idea is to take advantage of the several subsea cables that are converging in Virginia Beach – including a Microsoft and Facebook line stretching from Spain and a recently announced Google cable that will string from France.

The ring would link those cables to various points in each city, using them for city services such as schools, public safety and emergency operations.

Wallace said officials must “make sure resilience is built in” to protect against flooding.

“The biggest issue, because they’re buried, is if it’s not resilient it could then float to the top,” he said. They have to “lock in” the manholes in which the cables are buried.

Though subsea cables are built for water, Paul Barford said, another unforeseen risk is flooding of the landing stations once the cables reach land, rendering the marine wires moot.

So what’s the solution to all this? The Barfords said there are three main options.

Two: Replacing infrastructure with a completely new system. Expensive, hard.

Three: Reroute the internet traffic through existing physical equipment. That may add wait time to the service, but it would be a less expensive choice, Carol Barford said.

Most internet facilities, of course, are run by private providers such as Verizon and Cox. The onus would be on the companies to update them.

“Cox has invested more than $1.8 billion in our network in Virginia since 2006 to ensure that our state-of-the-art network is resilient and prepared to serve our customers today and into the future,” spokeswoman Margaret-Hunter Wade said in an email, adding the company is prepared “should disaster strike.” She could not elaborate by the newspaper’s deadline.

Verizon could not be reached for comment.

Ultimately, Carol Barford said, it “depends on the cost-benefit to the providers to keep up. Depends if it’s worth it to them to stay ahead of this.”

Followed notifications

Please log in to use this feature

Welcome to the conversation.

We strive to be fair and accurate in our reporting. In turn, we ask
that you remain civil and open-minded in your responses. Comments
should be relevant to the topic at hand, factual and thoughtful.
The comments section is like a letter to the editor, not a chat
room. Please read the full commenting rules before posting.
Read the full rules here.

Watch this discussion.Stop watching this discussion.

(0) comments

Welcome to the discussion.

We strive to be fair and accurate in our reporting. In turn, we ask
that you remain civil and open-minded in your responses. Comments
should be relevant to the topic at hand, factual and thoughtful.
The comments section is like a letter to the editor, not a chat
room. Please read the full commenting rules before posting.